Failed to Uninstall

[vg13]

-Need to uninstall to reinstall updated so DB syncs

-Cannot uninstall: tried %PROGRAMFILES(x86)% and that did not work as an admin. 

Any other work arounds?

Thanks!

[Lusil]

Hey @vg13, let's see what we can do here. 

What happens when you try to uninstall your desktop app?

If you get any error messages, send me a screenshot so that I can have a better look into this with you. 

Thanks!

[Nvisible Harlequin]

Hi, I am experiencing the same problem. When trying to uninstall the app it will show a "Failed to uninstall Dropbox" message above the progress bar where the only option is to click on Cancel. Manual uninstall from the Client folder where I run the exe file as administrator gives the same error. I tried with the offline installer as well and got a different error: The installer encountered error 2. The link to the help page provided in the error dialogue box is not helpful.  

I also tried killing Dropbox Update (32) from the Task Manager, and I rebooted in safe mode and tried all the steps mentioned above without a success. The currently installed version is 115.4.601. 

The original issue is that I cannot start Dropbox at all, either automatically with Windows startup or manually by navigating to the Dropbox exe file.

[Jay]

Hi @vg13, @Nvisible Harlequin, do you have any third party apps or services that link to your Dropbox app or folder which could be preventing the app from being uninstalled?

Regarding the error 2 message, you could try these steps to resolve it?

[Nvisible Harlequin]

Hi @Jay 

Thanks for the assistance.

I disconnected all apps from my Dropbox account, if that's what you were thinking when you said to unlink all third-party apps and services. Following the instructions from the other thread you posted, I was not able to locate 0 byte file named "Client" in the Dropbox folder within the Program Files, and I made sure hidden files are visible. I also checked the PATH environment variable and it did contain %SystemRoot%\system32 and %SystemRoot% lines.

After that I started with manual cleanup and I was able to remove all files from %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA% folders, however I was not able to remove one file from the %PROGRAMFILES(x86)% - DropboxExt64.46.0.dll, but after checking another thread on Dropbox community, with the help of the app shellexview I finally removed that file as well, rebooted the system and started offline installer as Administrator, only to get to the same error message: The installer encountered error 2

I'm stuck now, so if you have any more ideas how to resolve this I would greatly appreciate it. BTW, Windows installation is pretty fresh, not even three months since clean install was performed.

[Jay]

Are you certain that all traces of the Dropbox desktop application have been removed from the system? Are there any services running with the Dropbox app?

Was the version of the app you had originally pre-installed on the machine?

[Nvisible Harlequin]

I am pretty certain I removed everything. When I try to install the app from the offline installer I do get a Dropboxupdate.exe service in the task manager, but I stop it manually and delete the %PROGRAMFILES(x86)% folder where the source file is located. There was also one other service running with the initial installation (the one that stopped working and the reason for me reaching out), it was located in the system32 folder, but I also stopped it and deleted it from there as well. I also used CCleaner to remove all the registry entries associated to previous installations, so unless there is something running in the background that has a name not clearly associated with Dropbox, I think everything was wiped. 

Dropbox was not preinstalled on the machine, I installed it after fresh Windows 10 install. 

[Jay]

Thanks for the info, would it be possible to contact you at the email associated with your account to look into this further?

[Nvisible Harlequin]

Yes of course! Thanks for the assistance.

[Jay]

I've sent you an email, please could you reply to it when you get a chance!